Faraday’s mind was of a very individual turn; he could not walk along the beaten tracks, but must pursue truth wherever it led him. His dogged tenacity for exact fact was accompanied by a perfect fearlessness of speculation. He would throw overboard without hesitation the most deeply-rooted notions if experimental evidence pointed to newer ideas. He had learned to doubt the idea of poles; so he outgrew the idea of atoms, which he considered an arbitrary conception. Many who heard his bold speculations and his free coinage of new terms deemed him vague and loose in thought. Nothing could be more untrue. He let his mind play freely about the facts; he framed thousands of hypotheses, only to let them go by if they were not supported by facts. “He is the wisest philosopher,” he said in a lecture on the nature of matter, “who holds his theory with some doubt—who is able to proportion his judgment and confidence to the value of the evidence set before him, taking a fact for a fact and a supposition for a supposition, as much as possible keeping his mind free from all source of prejudice; or, where he cannot do this (as in the case of a theory), remembering that such a source is there.”

In one of his later experimental researches he wrote:—

As an experimentalist, I feel bound to let experiment guide me into any train of thought which it may justify; being satisfied that experiment, like analysis, must lead to strict truth if rightly interpreted; and believing also that it is in its nature far more suggestive of new trains of thought and new conditions of natural power.

WHY NO SUCCESSOR.

Perhaps it was this very freedom of thought which debarred him from enlisting other men as collaborators in his researches. His one assistant for thirty years, Sergeant Anderson, was indeed invaluable to him for his quality of implicit obedience. Other helpers in the laboratory he had none. Apparently he found his researches to be of too individual a character to permit him to deputise any part of his work. He was never satisfied when told about another’s experiment; he must perform it for himself. Often a discovery arose from some chance or trivial incident of an otherwise unsuccessful experiment. The power of “lateral vision,” which Tyndall has so strongly emphasised, was a prime factor in his successes. That power could not be delegated to any mere assistant. Many times did outsiders approach him, thinking to bring new facts to his notice; never, save on the solitary occasion when a Mr. William Jenkin drew his attention to the “extra-current” spark seen on the breaking of an electric circuit, did such novelties turn out to be really new. Alleged discoveries thus brought to him merely plagued him. He thought that anyone who had the wit to observe any really new phenomenon would be the person best qualified to work it out. His method was to work on alone, dwelling amidst his experiments until the mind, familiarising itself with the facts, was ready to suggest their correlations. It was sometimes urged against him as a complaint that he never took up any younger man to train him as his successor, even as Davy had taken up himself and trained him in scientific work. One of the miscellaneous notes, found after his death, throws some light on this:—

It puzzles me greatly to know what makes the successful philosopher. Is it industry and perseverance with a moderate proportion of good sense and intelligence? Is not a modest assurance or earnestness a requisite? Do not many fail because they look rather to the renown to be acquired than to the pure acquisition of knowledge, and the delight which the contented mind has in acquiring it for its own sake? I am sure I have seen many who would have been good and successful pursuers of science, and have gained themselves a high name, but that it was the name and the reward they were always looking forward to—the reward of the world’s praise. In such there is always a shade of envy or regret over their minds, and I cannot imagine a man making discoveries in science under these feelings. As to Genius and its power, there may be cases; I suppose there are. I have looked long and often for a genius for our Laboratory, but have never found one. But I have seen many who would, I think, if they had submitted themselves to a sound self-applied discipline of mind, have become successful experimental Philosophers.

To Dr. Becker he wrote:

I was never able to make a fact my own without seeing it; and the descriptions of the best works altogether failed to convey to my mind such a knowledge of things as to allow myself to form a judgment upon them. It was so with new things. If Grove, or Wheatstone, or Gassiot, or any other told me a new fact, and wanted my opinion either of its value, or the cause, or the evidence it could give on any subject, I never could say anything until I had seen the fact. For the same reason I never could work, as some Professors do most extensively, by students or pupils. All the work had to be my own.

INCOME AND EXPENDITURE.

Of Faraday’s social life and surroundings during his meridional and later period much might be written. After his great researches of 1831 to 1836 scientific honours flowed in freely upon him, especially from foreign academies and universities; and the fame he won at home would have brought him, had he been so minded, an ample professional fortune and all the artificial amenities of Society which follow the successful money-maker. From all such mundane “success” he cut himself off when in 1831 he decided to abandon professional fee-earning, and to devote himself to the advancement of science. Probably the tenets of the religious body to which he belonged were a leading factor in compelling this decision. Not having laid upon him the necessity of providing for a family, and accustomed to live in an unostentatious style, he could contemplate the future without anxiety. With his pension, his Woolwich lectures, and his Trinity House appointment, Faraday was in no sense poor, though his Royal Institution professorship never brought him so much as £300 a year until after he was over sixty years of age; but on the other hand, his private charities were very numerous. How much of his income was spent in that way can never be known; for the very privacy of his deeds of kindness prevented any record from being kept. Certain it is that his gifts to the aged poor and sick must have amounted to several hundreds of pounds a year; for while his income for many years must have averaged at least £1,000 or £1,100, and his domestic expenditure could not have much exceeded half that sum, he does not seem to have attempted to save anything. Nor did he grudge time or strength to do kindly charitable acts in visiting the sick.